Henry William Mobsby was born on 17 August 1859 at Hove, Sussex, England, and came to Queensland in 1883. He had diplomas and certificates from the London Chamber of Commerce, the City and Guilds Institute, the Cripplegate Institute and the South Kensington School of Arts. Mobsby was an instructor in Decoration and Photography at the Brisbane Technical College before being appointed artist and photographer with the Department of Agriculture and Stock in 1897. In 1899, he was also appointed to the Chief Secretary's Department and the Intelligence and Tourist Bureau. Mobsby's photography gained international distinction and he officially represented Queensland at the Franco-British Exhibition in London in 1908, the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 (where he took a motion picture certificate course), the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924-25, and the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin in 1925-26.